The boys have been scammed… like suckers.
Grigory Pasko, journalist
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«Nezavisimaya writes»: «Last week, three sensitive blows were inflicted on the international positions of «Gazprom». The first and most substantial of them was inflicted by the Europarliament, which on 22 April adopted the third «energy package» of the plan for liberalization of Europe’s energy market. It brings into great question the attempts by «Gazprom» to get to the end consumer in European countries. Right behind, on 24 April, the leadership of Turkmenistan in the presence of a representative Russian delegation openly declared about support of the project for the construction of the Nabucco gas pipeline to Europe. And on 25 April at an international energy summit in Sofia in spite of all efforts «Gazprom» was not able to attain the inclusion by the Eurounion of «South stream» into the number of priority projects. Defeat on all international fronts may signify the collapse of the conception of the foreign expansion of the concern».
The boys have been scammed. They’re used to being the ones doing allthe scamming themselves, but here – right back atcha, if you please…And what is a shame – the Nord Stream project (I have a special lovefor it), even if it is built, will not be able to bring in the kind ofbucks that Putin and Co. had been counting on. Because «…a seriousimpediment will become the anti-monopoly laws of the EU… It can not beruled out that in the end, they will force it to sell the gas at theborder, and not within the Eurounion. And this is a much more seriousthreat, inasmuch as success in this battle for «Gazprom» is not at allguaranteed».
How has it been until now? Menacing Munich speeches. Puffing cheeksand blowing bubbles. Demonstrative friendship with sociopathic thugs.Buying former chancellors and premiers… And all this behind the coverof one phrase: “And just where are these westerners going to go to getaway from our oil and gas?” Turns out they’re not fools over thereeither. They’ve figure out where they can go to get away from a bunchof insolent boys, flailing their arms with fingers spread like somekind of inner-city street punks. That kind of gesticulation, to thebest of my recollection, was in fashion and in custom at the end of theeighties of the previous century. Hey! Boys! It’s different yearsoutside, and even a different millennium!
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7 Comments
“It can not be ruled out that in the end, they will force it to sell the gas at the border, and not within the Eurounion.”And you think this is bad for Gazprom?? This takes all the transit risk off of Gazprom, and puts it on the customer. “The Boys” will shed no tears over this.
Then why have “The Boys” been so adamant for so long about wanting to break into the domestic distribution markets in the consumer countries? Answer: Because that’s where the real markups are. The price they can get for their gas at the border is many times lower than the price European consumers pay. Also, if they sell at the border, they are but one of several competing suppliers (Algeria, Libya, North Sea, LNG, and, if Nabucco ever gets built – the Middle East), whereas if they control the entire chain from Siberian wellhead to European stove or petrochemical plant, they get to call the shots. THIS is why “The Boys” definitely do NOT want to sell their gas at the border, and are trying so hard to push through the Nord Stream project and to buy up gas assets in Europe.
Up until now, gazprom has had to deliver gas at the Ukrainian border. This has put the transit risk on Gazprom and given leverage to various murky Ukrainian actors. That will be over.
If “gazprom has had to deliver gas at the Ukrainian border”, as you write, then the transit risk through Ukraine is NOT on Gazprom at all – its responsibility ends at the border!Didn’t you think it funny that “The Boys” got so upset when the EU offered bilateral aid to Ukraine to help rebuild its gas transit system, and insisted that they should have been invited to play too? This sounds to me like “The Boys” actually LIKE the way things are “arranged” with gas transport (and diversion) in Ukraine, and don’t want anything to change at all.
My apologies for being unclear. The border Gazprom had to deliver gas to was the Ukrainian section of the border of the former USSR.
Russia was never under any obligation to “step into the shoes” of the former USSR, except as much as Russia choose to step into those shoes. It’s true enough that Russia had proposed itself as the “legal successor” to the USSR, but a number of CIS states never formally signed off on the CIS treaty making that a reality (Ukraine being foremost among them).Russia can, at the time of its choosing, agree with the Ukrainian government’s position on whether or not Russia is the true legal successor to the USSR and announce that henceforth the old USSR’s energy delivery obligations to the EU are not obligations of the RF at all, but rather Ukrainian obligations (as Ukraine is the Former Soviet state that most nearly borders the EU, not Russia).The fact that Ukraine has zero potential to export the contractually required “Soviet” gas to Europe (unless Ukraine also receives that gas from its once fellow-traveling post-Soviet state the Russian Federation) is one great big giant “YP” (your problem), and not at all an “OP” (our problem).But since Nabbucco seems to be the new European pipeline project most likely to get built, it should do very nicely to meet about a third of Ukraine’s own domestic energy consumption needs (and this will of course still leave Eastern Europe out in the cold, to say nothing about Western Europe).You can go right ahead and pump gas from Central Asia to the West, and then go right ahead and shunt it right back again further east, to Ukraine. Go right ahead, and more power to you! But that still leaves both Eastern and Western Europe out in the cold. Once again, the fact that countries lack signed gas delivery contracts with the Russian Federation is a great big fat “YP” and definitely not an “OP!”While it is true enough that Russia’s current gas contract with Ukraine is for ten years, no one is suggesting that Nabbucco gas will flow to Europe before the next ten years. So if Russia simply refuses to renew its gas supply contract with Ukraine, after ten years, for whatever reason (of Russia’s own choosing) what then?Good luck and godspeed to you with those massively “strategical” Jamestown Western gas plans!LMAO!
Rkka wrote, “It can not be ruled out that in the end, [Russia] will be forced to sell [its] gas at the border, and not within the Euro-union.”Rk, here’s a newsflash for you: Russia cannot be “forced” to sell gas, or anything else, to Europe at all, not “at the border” or otherwise.You would do well to print off my comments above, then crumple up the piece of paper and put it in your corn-cob pipe and huff and puff on it for a good long while, whilst you meditate on the true meaning of my words.Europe (and especially Germany) “gets this,” even if a certain unnamed imperialist power, perched on far away shores (with let’s face it no real skin in the fight) doesn’t.